poseidon project fighting legionella

On March 2nd, in Schiedam, the Netherlands, the 5th meeting of the Project POSEIDON (Plasmonic-Based Automated Lab-on-Chip Sensor for the Rapid in-Situ Detection of Legionella) Technical Committee took place. This three-year project to fight Legionella is funded by the European Union HORIZON 2020 program.

The working group comprises many companies from various countries - Italy (Clivet, Protolab, ARC - Research Applied Centre, Warrant Group), Sweden (Uppsala University), Spain (Catlab) and from the Netherlands (Metrohm Applikon), all of whom collaborated for the 23 month state of the art project to develop a device for the automatic optical detection of the pathogen Legionella Pneumophila bacteria.

Despite some issues related to the results obtained from the Legionella detection sensor prototype testing, the work is progressing and Clivet is ready with 3 off ELFOFresh 70 units to start tests in its laboratory using harmless synthetic samples of the bacteria. After this initial testing, the Clivet units will be transferred to an external laboratory for tests with the real bacteria.

Another major announcement at the meeting is the launch of a Poseidon Summer School 2017, with the aim of disseminating the results of some European projects dedicated to the applications of photonic devices in the "Health" field, giving information on the most recent and relevant research topics.

The next meeting of the Technical Committee is scheduled for this summer.